Education Outside co-founder Randi Fisher (left) with CEO James Cleveland at the City Picnic.

Photo: Sumit Kohli

Star power lit up the sky recently during the Part the Cloud fundraiser at Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, where guests were dazzled with performances by Broadway star Idina Menzel (who voiced “Elsa” in Disney’s blockbuster “Frozen”), country singer Jay Allen and surprise guest Grammy-winner Garth Brooks.

Founded in 2012 by Atherton philanthropist Mikey Hoag, this biennial event raised a whopping $11 million for Alzheimer’s research, a disease that afflicted both her parents.

Led by co-chairs Ellen Drew and Debbie Robbins with emcee Sage Steele of ESPN, the heartfelt fete featured colorful decor by designer Stanlee Gatti, who donated his efforts to support the cause.

And 300 Peninsula guests also cheered one of their own when Victoria Bailey, a former Miss New Jersey-turned-Morgan Stanley private wealth adviser, joined Menzel onstage for a rousing verse of “Let It Go” that brought the house down.

Wiley’s wisdom: Graduating students at the San Francisco Art Institute were dazzled by former alum-turned-presidential portraitist, Kehinde Wiley, who delivered the commencement speech at Nourse Theater on May 13.

Wiley is a Los Angeles native who graduated from the Art Institute in 1999. He later received his MFA from Yale University; was honored by the U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts in 2015 and now, mostly, calls Senegal in western Africa home. (He also spends time at his New York studio and in Beijing.)

We caught up with Wiley, post-ceremony, across town at the institute’s Fort Mason campus, where he and his mom, Freddie Mae Wiley, mingled on Mother’s Day with VIP supporters for a McCalls cocktail buffet and conversation with SFAI President Gordon Knox, among grad student artworks in their studios.

“When I graduated from the Art Institute, I think I was just as lost as every student today at graduation,” he said, with a modest laugh. “There’s no secret sauce.”

The 41-year-old recalled that when he graduated, he was advised to work harder than he ever thought possible — and that turned out to be true.

“But it also turns out that the door opens for everyone. But are you ready when it opens?” Wiley mused. “Do you have a room full of gorgeous paintings when someone’s ready to offer you an opportunity?”

That answer, said Wiley, is often no.

“Because you’re self-doubting, wondering what the market wants. Well, f— that,” he declared. “Scratch that itch you need to scratch and create a room full of something. So much of the art business is about building consensus. But first you must build consensus within yourself; find that true north that makes you realize you’re on to something and it means the world to you.”

One of the greatest lessons Wiley learned at the Art Institute was a freedom inspired by the sheer act of letting go of the figure in his work. Wiley was encouraged to paint beyond the body, moving idea into space rather than just copying things in the actual world.

“At Yale, later in Harlem, as I went out into the world, I began looking at the figure not simply as form but as a text,” he explained. “A series of the ways we look at black men and their bodies and their social roles and all the baggage that we, as viewers, project upon what we’re looking at.”

And that, he said beaming, started here in San Francisco: a new way of thinking about the black body in public space.

Healthy harvest: Like the crops that elementary-school students raise in on-site living labs, so too, has Education Outside grown. The program is a partner of the S.F. Unified School District.

And this year’s fourth City Picnic at Jefferson Elementary School in the Sunset District raised a filling $550K. It also starred a rustic Italian feast by award-winning chef David Nayfeld and pastry chef Angela Pinkerton. They’re also partners in the city’s latest red-hot resto duo: Che Fico and Theorita in the North of the Panhandle neighborhood.

Education Outside (co-founded by Arden Bucklin-Sporer and philanthropist Randi Fisher with chef-restaurateur Patricia Unterman) connects K-5 city school kids to scientific discovery, environmental education, garden-fresh food and good nutrition. And in just seven short years, the program’s grown from four schools to 55 that serve some 20,000 elementary students.

“We’re committed to building the next generation of diverse leaders who understand, love and care for science in the natural world,” toasted Education Outside CEO James Cleveland. “And 1,000 days of Education Outside is the meaningful gift our children need to become these future leaders.”

Catherine Bigelow is a freelance reporter-columnist-blogger who specializes in coverage about boldfaced names and A-List affairs. A fourth-generation Northern Californian, Miss Bigelow first divined her love of San Francisco by reading the dispatches of such classic Chronicle columnists as Pat Steger, Stanton Delaplane, Charles McCabe and Herb Caen. She began her newspaper career at The San Francisco Chronicle in 1995 as an editorial assistant to the features department's editor and columnists. She became a features reporter in 1999 and was assigned the society column in 2004.

Catherine left The Chronicle in 2007 but continues to write features for the paper and a twice-weekly society column.